The Parthenon was part of an ambitious building campaign that began around 450 b.c. in Athens Greece.

was how they would get the massive blocks of marble needed because the quarries were located thousands of miles away on remote islands. The Athenians lucked out when a marble deposit was discovered only miles away from the construction site. The second challenge faced was assembling the hundreds of skilled stone masons to work on the building. An estimated 200 stone masons were gathered from all around ancient Greece to construct the Parthenon. The builders of the time are noted for their keen attention to detail. Their measurements were so precise that gaps in the blocks of marble are less than 1/10th of a millimeter, or about the width of a human hair. and if that wasn't enough, many of the masons who worked on the Parthenon used different measuring systems depending on where they are from. To compensate for all of these differences must have been one of the most difficult tasks of the whole build.        The Parthenon is such a distinct and admired building for many different reasons. The Parthenon epitomizes all the ideals of Greek thought during the peak of the Classical Greek era. The idealism of the Greek way of living, the attention to detail, as well as the understanding of a mathematically explained harmony in the natural world,  These ideals are represented in the perfect proportions of the building, in its intricate architectural elements. To the unaided eye, columns tend to look narrower in the middle than at the top or bottom.  So when Iktinos designed the Parthenon he built the columns with slight “optical refinements”  or bulges in the middle, to make them appear straight this effect is known as entasis. The whole building its self has almost no perfect right angles or straight lines. The ancient Greeks had advanced knowledge that straight lines give the impression of descending curves under the light of the sun. The curving starts from the foundations of the temple and moves on to the sill, entablature, ceilings, roof and even the tiling. The architects also had advanced knowledge of proportional harmony which is identifying useful aspects of natural processes and applying them to their creations. This joining of diversity, unity, and proportional limitations create forms that are beautiful to us because it exemplifies the principles of the cosmic order that we are all a part of.         Modern day architects restoring the building have faced many challenges along the way. One of the biggest issues was that there over 70,000 pieces and no instruction manual. Skilled architects and stone workers catalogued and numbered every piece of stone and then had to figure out how they all fit together. In the process of putting together this giant puzzle they soon found that many pieces of marble have been lost forever. They then had to painstakingly remake a new piece exactly identical to the old one and then bond it to the original. As the architects uncovered more of the techniques used by the ancient Athenians they became more and more efficient at reconstructing the building. Restorers discovered that the original builders had used the “golden ratio” which a mathematical solution to find correct proportion is often used in the visual arts. Even with all of this knowledge of how the Parthenon was constructed in just eight years, it has taken experts over thirty years to fix the problems caused by previous restoration attempts and damage over the last 2,500 years.         The Ancient Greek Parthenon was built over 2,500 years ago. Since its construction it has had many uses, and even today is still considered the culmination of classical architecture. Damaged by man, the nature, and war, it is nowhere near the pristine condition it was originally in, but over the last 30 or so years a major reconstruction effort has taken place and transformed this once considered “ruin” into a beautiful work of architecture. It serves as an example of what man is and always has been capable of, and even gives us insight of what we are capable of in the future. This reconstruction effort has saved an icon of Western Civilization from complete destruction, and has given myself along with many others inspiration for the future.